A Companion to Gender Prehistory, First Edition. Edited by Diane Bolger. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This discussion of gender relations in prehistory is limited to studies of the material culture of six modern nation-states: Slovakia, Hungary, the Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia. The chronological range of this chapter covers six millennia, with the following calibrated dates: Mesolithic (6500–5500 B.C.E.); Neolithic (6300–4000 B.C.E.); and Chalcolithic (5000–2500 B.C.E.). The chronology (based on radiocarbon, cross-dating with the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, and historical data), as well as the definition, of the Bronze and Early Iron Ages differs within this rather broad study region. In Slovakia, Hungary, and Serbia the Bronze Age is dated to ca. 2500–800 B.C.E. and the Early Iron Age to ca. 800–450/300 B.C.E. In the rest of the study region the Bronze Age is dated to ca. 3300–1200/1150 B.C.E. and the Early Iron Age to ca. 1200/1150–500/450/400 B.C.E., although significant differences in chrono- logy are found sometimes among authors from the same country. To avoid misunder- standings, the terminology adopted by individual authors for the Metal Ages is used and their chronology given in brackets. 1 The impact of socialist politics on gender studies Ever since gender research began in the West in the 1980s, the contribution of Eastern Europeans has been very poor. In fact to date only two countries, Romania and Serbia, have some autochthonous production in the field, beginning around 2005 and inspired by post-structuralist sociology and postmodern philosophy. Most of the debate on gender issues in this region’s prehistory has been the product of Western academic research. Eastern Europeans have mostly ignored the debate, generally Gender in Eastern European Prehistory John Chapman and Nona Palincaş CHAPTER 20 0001566516.INDD 413 0001566516.INDD 413 6/21/2012 7:30:30 PM 6/21/2012 7:30:30 PM UNCORRECTED PROOF